48-71 Flashcards
Absolute Dating
Any method of measuring the age of an event or object in years.
Unconformity
Unconformities are gaps in the geologic record that may indicate episodes of crustal deformation, erosion, and sea level variations.
Index fossils
A fossil that is found in the rock layers of only one geologic age and that is used to establish the age of the rock layers.
Geological time scale
The standard method used to divide the Earth’s long natural history into manageable parts.
Sea-floor spreading
The process by which new oceanic lithosphere forms as magma rises toward the surface and solidifies.
Plate tectonics
The theory that explains how large pieces of the Earth’s outermost layer, called tectonic plates, move and change shape.
Convergent boundaries
The boundary formed by the collision of two lithospheric plates.
Divergent boundaries
The boundary between two tectonic plates that are moving away from each other.
Transform boundaries
The boundary between tectonic plates that are sliding past each other horizontally.
Fault
A break in a body of rock along which one block slides relative to another.
Evolution
The process by which different kinds of living organisms are thought to have developed and diversified from earlier forms during the history of earth.
Adaption
A change or the process of change in which an organism or species becomes better suited to its environment.
Homologous structure
An example of an organ or bone that appears in different animals, that are similar.
Analogous structures
Similar function but different, shape?.
Taxonomy
The classification of something and other branch of science concerning classification.
Vestigial structures
Vestigialty refers to genetically determined structures or attributes that have apparently lost most or all of their ancestral function in a given species, but have retained durning the process of evolution.
Natural selection
The prices where an organism better adapted to their environment tend to survive and produce more off spring.
Matter
Physical substance in general, anything that has made and takes up space
Chemical property
A property or behavior of a substance when it undergoes a chemical change or reaction.
Physical property
Any property that is measurable, whose value describes a state of a physical system.
Chemical change
Any change that results int the formation of a new chemical substance
Physical change
In which no new substances are formed, changes chemical substance, but not its chemical composition.
Specific Heat
The best required to raise the temperature of the unit mass of a given substance by a given amount.
Relative Dating
Any method of determining whether an event or object is older or younger than other objects or events.
